Died Screaming
by Ripper
Summary: Before, during and after- salvation and damnation and better living through fermentation.
1. Before

The songs belong to Tom Waits. The demon and the angel belong to each other.  
  
  
  
  
Well hell doesn't want you  
and heaven is full  
and the earth died screaming  
while I lay dreaming  
and the earth died screaming  
while I lay dreaming of you...  
  
It was of the hour before the highest moon when the demon J. Crowley did walk the streets. Hot and high the air did pass around him and sweep the mortal refuse past his feet. Close enough to touch they stood, juicy and ripe for the picking, fragrant skin tight and firm around them justly rightly waiting to be tasted. But there was music in the step of the demon J. Crowley, and he would have none of the living frailty while his dead heart beat still as a stone. So they talked, talked, talked themselves down and around him and walked, walked, walked on the blind and lonely path without a light to guide them while he passed amongst them like smoke in the night. And he burned too dark to touch.  
  
  
Come on along with the Black Rider  
we'll have a gay old time  
lay down in the web of the black spider  
I'll drink your blood like wine  
So come on in  
it ain't no sin  
take off your skin  
and dance around in your bones...  
  
  
The Green Goddess licked his veins inside out and teased the blood long sleeping with promises of thujone and kisses. The scent of an angel clung to him but not the angel himself...a head full of emerald fumes and an aching burning crotch were the entirety of the demon J. Crowley. The dull grey snake of the pavement moved under him like a swamp, flowing and wet and sucking his boots down with hard licks.   
  
Until  
  
the Window shone above him like a lighthouse and he stared in awe at the yellow wonder of it all, stepping back and back to better see but tumbling when the hard gutter came up fast from beneath to take him down down down where he belonged. The demon J. Crowley lay in the filth and laughed and laughed like a straightjacket fool until he wept. The rain began to fall, knocking the heat from the air, and he sang a little more.  
  
Well, Jesus gonna be here  
gonna be here soon   
he's gonna cover us up with leaves  
with a blanket from the moon  
with a promise and a vow  
and a lullaby for my brow  
Jesus gonna be here  
Be here soon...  
  
  
  
It was quiet inside. The single lamp burned dull and soft, lighting the face of the angel Aziraphale. Glass of wine. Old and precious things all about. A deep red chair and a book with tiny writing. The smell of ancient wood and clean dust. The window a crack open, for the night -unfortunately for all concerned - was sultry, which went utterly against everything everyone everywhere knows about London.  
  
"I got to keep my eyes op-ENN, so that I can see my LORD! I'm gonna watch the HOR-I-ZOONNNN, for a brand new Fooooorrrd..."  
  
Blink. Blink.   
  
Hmph. Deplorable drunks, wandering around disturbing people at this unGod- at this wretched hour. The singing tapered off like water down the drain, replaced by the soft pat of rain against the window. The angel Aziraphale settled back to the fine, thin paper dotted with someone else's thoughts long dead.   
  
Then  
  
"I can-a hear him rollin on dooowwwwnn the laaanne, I said HOLLYWOOD BE THY NAME! Jesus gonna be heeeerrrrreeee...gonna be here ssssssssoon..."  
  
The angel Aziraphale sighed, and gently cursed his innate Niceness. After all, it was late, and it was raining, and give him your cloak as well and all that. He only hoped that whoever it was wouldn't smell quite as bad as he sounded. The Window of Crowley's Desire opened and a fair, ruffled head poked into the darkness, light shining behind to make him a Madonna Without Child.  
  
"Hello? I say, are you alright down there?"  
  
"Well, I've been FA-YAYAYAITHFUL, and y'know I've been SO good- except for drinkiiiiiiiiiin', but he knew that I would..."  
  
The angel Aziraphale squinted closely at the rumpled figure sprawled beneath the streetlight in a pool of brackish water and self-pity.  
  
"I'm 'onna leave thish place beeeettteeerrrerer, than the way I found it wassssss, and Jesus gonna be...here...gonnabehere sssssssssshoon..."  
  
The angel Aziraphale's mouth fell open a shade, and he peered closer. "...Crowley? Crowley, is that you?"  
  
  
  
...and the demon J. Crowley rolled over in his bed of stone and copped a face full of rain and sympathy. "ZIR'PHALE! Wotchew doing here, eh?"  
  
"I live here, Crowley. Why are you lying in the gutter?"  
  
"Oh. Oh, oh, right. You livesh heremmm. Yesss." He moaned as the world went sideways again and the angel Aziraphale said something about someone that wasn't important. All the music had left the demon J.Crowley, left him naked with nothing but his own rolling thoughts washing back and forth across his head like rancid treacle. The head above him vanished back into the warmth, leaving him flat on the cold, cold ground, staring at the stars that didn't care a brass thingummy for him and his.   
  
He remembered a story he'd heard from someone dead now, about stars...that by the time you saw them, they were already gone. It had been forgot along with the dead man he'd been told it by, until there'd been something on the telly about stars, how they died screaming in a beautiful, horrible fireworks of pain. The instruments, the man on telly with the carnation in his buttonhole had said. The instruments -what instruments? What are they doing with instruments in space?- had picked up noises, signals, sounds from the stars as they imploded/exploded/whatever. They screamed as they died.  
  
The demon J. Crowley opened his mouth to call for an angel. It filled with cool water and, forgetting what he was about to say, he drank the liquid down. Then there were warm, soft arms smelling of soap all around him and a cross, kind voice in his ears and heart.   
  
  
  
"...Crowley?"   
  
The demon J. Crowley opened one eye. Two. Too bright. Can't see a thing. A malicious someone had filled his mouth with something absorbent while he dozed, but on the plus side they'd placed him in a sweet-smelling place. As it turned out, the absorbent thing was his tongue. Poor tongue. All gone.  
  
"Oh, good you're awake heavens just look at yourself would you you're an absolute mess didn't you realise it was raining you're just lucky it's so warm tonight oh *do* sober up will you before you start slobbering on the couch at least not on the good cushions anyway oh just *look* at your lovely jacket it's completely spoiled I hope you didn't buy that..." The demon J. Crowley closed his eyes against the nasty lights and disappeared into the soft scarlet eternity of the chair. He couldn't care less what the angel Aziraphale was saying; he talked too much, and even if he said a thousand words, the ones that the demon J. Crowley needed to hear would not rank amongst them.  
  
"...Crowley? Are you going to sober up, or do I have to slap you?"  
  
"Mmmm..." The demon J. Crowley will not be sober; sober means thinking, thinking means he will realise where he is and then he will have to cry and if there is anything, *anything* that he fears, it is crying in front of the angel Aziraphale.   
  
Slap.   
  
Ouch.   
  
Eyes open.   
  
Crankypants angel, glaring like a nanny, a pretty lip caught between small white straight American teeth. "Now, Crowley, I *told* you I'd slap you, didn't I?"   
  
The demon J. Crowley could utter not one word not one syllable not one sound. The scent of the angel Aziraphale wrapped around him, clean and sweet, washing drying in the light of a Sunday morning. Soft, and lovely. It would be so easy, just to take him. Just to take. Want and take, that was how it ought to be. Grab handfuls of fair hair and pull back the pretty face and bite the soft mouth, bite it and bite it and leave his mark until no one would ever touch it again and it would be all his, forever and ever amen-  
  
Thoughts coming too thick, trying to drown the demon J. Crowley in mendacity cocktailed with truth. No choice left save sobriety- purge the body and the mind will follow...or was that cut off the head and stuff garlic in the mouth? He blinked once twice three times and the world crystallised before him. "Ahhhh..."   
  
"Serves you right for getting shickered, dear boy. And without me, as well."   
  
He looked even better sober. The demon J. Crowley felt his limbs drawn like a cursed marionette, reaching out to grab and claw and shred, to take every holy and pure part of the angel Aziraphale and bend it to his will-  
  
"It's always without you," said the demon J. Crowley, past caring and into despair.   
  
Kind eyes like the sea after a storm gazed down at him. "Crowley? Whatever do you mean?" Silence. "Is something the matter?"  
  
IwillnotcryIwillnotcryIdon'tcareIdon'tcareIdon'tcareNothingmattersIwillnotcry...  
  
"Crowley...why are you crying?"  
  
...damn.   
  
Why was he crying? Because...because...  
  
Because he could not love. He could not feel the sweet, pure compassion he had once known, only thick choking desire and need...hunger. Always hunger, gnawing at the back of his mind like a fanged worm burrowing deeper into him, spreading its sickly sweet poison through him. Because he wanted to love like an angel, but could only lust as one of the damned. Because he had chosen, long ago, not to love one who wanted it then as desperately as he did now, and for that he would never love again. Because...  
  
Because he finally knew what it was to fall.  
  
"Um. Something in my eye," said the demon J. Crowley, a watercolour smile on his face. The angel Aziraphale was beside him now, so close he could feel the soft warmth that he could never possess. Rain falling down down down hard on the roof above and scratching at the window pain, like Crowley's thoughts begging to be let in.  
  
"Oh." The angel Aziraphale was Not Convinced. "Well, are you going to dry yourself off? Or do you want to borrow some of my-"  
  
The first kiss was soft, bare feet on moss and water on golden skin. The second was harder, running in an alleyway and laughing at the moon. The demon J. Crowley licked his lips and tried to keep the chanting thoughts of blood from his mind. All the scented fog of Desire had been swept away by the icy breeze and clarity of Need and suddenly, love was not so very important after all. The angel Aziraphale opened his mouth to speak but found a cool, white hand pressed across it.   
  
"Don't you say a bloody word, Angel."  
  
The third kiss was Sin itself. 


	2. During

Lyrics belong to the Pixies.  
  
we're apin' rapin' tapin' catharsis  
you get torn down and get erected  
my blood is working but my, my heart is  
dead  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Lights on/lights off.  
  
Lightson/lightsoff.  
  
On/off.  
  
On/off/on/off/on.  
  
  
  
On it is, then. Demon fingers win every time. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Like doing it in the dark makes it a secret. Like they won't smell me in your hair. Like the people you pass through in the street won't just look at you and see right past your tired smile and tweed substitute security blanket and Old Spice clouds to the cum stains that go to the bone. To the *bone*, you dirty bitch. Try getting that out. Martha Stuart recommends lemon juice and virgin blood.  
  
Where is my mind...dumdumdum...do you remember the rest of the words? That's a pity. You'd like them.  
  
I jump on you you jump on me and fuck who taught you to fuck? Who showed you? Who taught you *this*, for instance. Because it's nice. Mmm. Better than nice. Nice-*er*, even. Nicer than nicer than nice.   
  
Don't be so eager- it isn't becoming on you. And if I was on you I'd be coming too haha. Little joke.  
  
I said don't be eager. It wasn't supposed to be like this and when I said not to fight I didn't mean it well I meant it but you know what I mean oh yeah. Don't be eager. Yesss. Just keep doing that, right there. Right there. Nice. Please don't...don't stop. Don't. Relax. Just relax. Keep gong, keep going...keepgoingkeepgoingfuckyesfuckyesfuckyesFUCK. Fuck. Mmm.  
  
  
  
  
...is that it? 


	3. After

David Bowie and Tears For Fears lyrics in this one.  
People will hold us to blame  
  
It hit me today, it hit me today. Because of all we've seen, because of all we've said  
  
We are the dead. We are the dead.  
Match flare blinding. Cancerous end glows dull and pulsing, a raw red eye.  
  
One drag (first smoke shines grey on black).  
  
Two drag (second verse, same as the first).  
  
Three drag (joins the cloud, a darker shade of dim).  
  
Cough.  
  
Two bodies lying still and naked on the landscape once thick with heat and passion, now a dying dead dusted star, burned out and gutted and hung out to dry. Dark- it closes cold, thick, an icy shock of clarity changing to a leaden realisation.  
  
Two bodies- both awake, both faking sleep. Two bodies entwined, welded together in the scorch of lust and now stuck in the textbook lover's folly position (see fig.4a). Two bodies together.  
  
Alone.  
  
* * * *  
  
One thing kind of touched me today  
  
I looked at you and counted all the times we had laid  
  
Pressing our love through the night  
  
Knowing it's right, knowing it's right  
.because I *knew* it would happen how could I be so *stupid* and it's all *his* fault wait no- My fault. I'm the one, I'm the responsible one, I'm the designated driver, it's all me but my goodness it tasted good. He was- it was- never knew. I never knew about that I mean I knew about it it's there all around it has been since the start but here, with me, in me, it was here. And mine. It was mine. And they never told me. They NEVER TOLD ME about this. It's not love and I don't care. It could be.  
  
The angel Aziraphale sat still and frozen, dead to the world, dead to himself. A quiet pool churning. Cold silver light from a dead planet shafting across his face like a blade.  
  
But it has to be done (you never told me) because it's you or him (you never told me) and you know that much (you never FUCKING TOLD ME). He never told you. It's a game, all a game, and the loser is you. It's already too late.  
  
Bloody half-crescents dug into the palms, self-enforced stigmata of a slut. Eyes straight ahead. Don't look at him. Don't look at him.  
  
That's the choice. That's the deal and the plan and the 411 and the score. Baby. That's his choice. And ours. But not even a choice, if you like- the choosing is in the doing, if you get my drift. And if that is the way it has to be, then that is the way it will be done.  
  
-and a, a *shift*, you see.in the angel Aziraphale. A feeling not of flight, but falling.deep, dark and long, and a single hand reached out. Just one, shining, perfect hand that was all he wanted, all he needed. All he was. Completeness. Eternal. It was so simple. Isn't it simple? Yes.  
  
Angels hunger too. But not for themselves.  
  
We're taking it hard all the time  
  
Why don't we pass it by?  
  
Just reply, you've changed your mind  
  
We're fighting with the eyes of the blind  
  
Taking it hard, taking it hard. We are the dead.  
  
* * * *  
  
It's.gone. Empty. Sucked dry as a bone and chewed to a mass of scar tissue.  
  
The demon J. Crowley felt cheated. There was supposed to be an ending. There was supposed to be a soundtrack available and a Best Boy credit. There was supposed to be love. Brain worm settling in, happy once more. But who gives a fuck? Not me. Ha! I'm well hard, me. Well hard.  
  
Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw.  
  
Slipping away, even through the breath. Lighter than sand, sweet smelling, slipping like a silver blade into nothing. It should have been.but no. No salvation. No hope. And maybe, gnaw gnaw gnaw, maybe the wanting was alright. Maybe it was the doing that did you.  
  
The beauty had burned so hard, so long, so bright it left a scorched and empty hole. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Crowley's a sex junkie. Gone, gone, slipped away. Turning to face the ceiling (don't touch him he's right beside you look out), away from the wall and Truth. Gone. The last bright, beautiful thing to feed from. Spent.  
  
It was slipping away, he was slipping away. Face wet, stained. The demon J Crowley was not crying. He never cried. Of course. The cold hardness growing inside, taking over. And even now, the hunger within the demon J. Crowley stretching out, wanting something new.smooth, strong, young things.  
  
Because of all we've seen, Because of all we've said, We are the.  
  
.softly, quietly, gently even. But not fearfully- no fear now. No room for fear in a head full of terror. That's the trick, yeah, yeah, and yeah. Fill the cup till it runneth over. Softly, quietly, gently even step one two three, danse macabre all up the stairway to hell.  
  
Don't spill.  
  
Don't even breathe.  
  
The angel Aziraphale walked step-by-step-by-step, eyes of glass and heart of pulp. Glistening trail behind him, feelings gutted and stretched out in a trail to help him find his way home.  
  
I left my heeeaaarrrt.in your mouth. Your pretty, sharp mouth. Doo-dum-doo.  
  
Steel grip on the bucket, don't drop the bucket, hold on to the bucket. The bucket is your friend. And the demon J. Crowley slept on.  
  
Step-by-step-by-wakeuppleaseohpleasewakeupandkillmekillmenow-step. It's coming, it's building, it's peaking to the note, the highest note. We're there, baby. And it's you and it's me at the end of the world and we're laughing. We could laugh at them and sink into the sand, I love the shape of your mouth when you smile it's so smooth smile for me now. Once more. Just the once.  
  
.gentle twitch. Unconscious. Lazy spread of muscles. Sharp white teeth, just a glint, a hint of Beauty.  
  
Beauty.  
All around me are familiar faces Worn out places, worn out faces Bright and early for their daily races Going nowhere, going nowhere  
  
There was no screaming. There ought have been, but no.a sick, heavy silence that throbbed and rubbed at the angel Aziraphale. But there was blood soaking white sheets whiter skin, gore on snow. And there was pain.  
  
And their tears are filling up their glasses No expression, no expression Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow No tommorow, no tommorow.  
  
There was pain. Such pain. A clean, sharp ache that spread, a red flower of agony beginning in the chest and blossoming out to all around to every nerve. Baptism of fire. A bright world, with edges of deepest darkness. It was coming. It was here.  
  
And I find it kind of funny I find it kind of sad The dreams in which I'm dying Are the best I've ever had.  
  
The demon J. Crowley opened yellow lamp lit eyes, staring for hours and days and eternity at an angel. His own angel. It stood, a tiny sun to the demon J. Crowley's dying star. He saw sadness there, and fear, and need, all together. A shape as through a glass darkly stretched out the endless lands between them- his hand no more, merely a memory. The demon J. Crowley reached to touch, and felt the calm spread through him calm calm so calm and so beautiful. The need to tell thrashed within him -it's okay, it's okay, everything's okay- against lips that were rivers of darkness.  
  
And the angel Aziraphale watched his lover die. Black/red blood diluted with the blessed water, pooling, spilling, so much of it. So much blood. The demon J. Crowley was awake, was conscious (he can FEEL it, he can FEEL IT) and watching. Don't look at the eyes. Don't see the hate. Don't feel the Fear. Blue eyes dragged up by hooks of despair. Yellow eyes scorched to black already there. And in there-  
  
So much. So many years. It's okay, I'm so sorry, it's okay, I'm so sorry, I understand, I should be punished, it's not vengeance. It's not vengeance. The black eyes insist. The blue eyes hope.  
  
("What if you did the wrong thing, and I did a right one?")  
  
Click.  
  
Clarity.  
  
The lesson. It was all in the lesson. No forgiveness without understanding. No cleansing without pain.  
  
No forgiveness without sin.  
.the dark light of the demon J. Crowley flickered, and faded. Don't go without.it's not fair. To where, doesn't matter. Don't know, don't care. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.  
The angel Aziraphale watched the place for a time, numb. Thoughts still as winter and deep, deeper than sadness and deeper than pain.  
  
Then he got a mop, and some towels, and cleaned up the blood and holy water. He washed and dried his hands, and made himself a cup of tea. One milk. No sugar. The angel Aziraphale cried for a little bit then, just quietly. Then he splashed some water on his face, and went downstairs to open the shop, while the sun rose over cold, empty streets.  
  
Because of all we've seen, Because of all we've said, We are the dead. We are the dead. We are the dead. 


End file.
